With a cast of leering far-right paramilitaries, smiling skeletons climbing from mass graves and a buffoonish George W. Bush, an animated Internet cartoon that criticizes Colombia’s peace process has prompted a rebuke from the nation’s foreign minister.

The two-minute clip playing on the Amnesty International Web site is presented as a mock commercial for a new soap, Colombia Clean.

It’s a sarcastic reference to the Colombian government effort to make peace with illegal paramilitaries, a process that critics say absolves extremist right-wing warlords of savage massacres.

This past weekend, Hendrik Voss, a volunteer in the SOA
Watch national office and an organizer in the struggle to
close the School of the Americas, was being detained on an
order from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He
was held for three days in DC’s Central Cellblock, the DC
Jail and at a Homeland Security Detention Center in
Northern Virginia.

Due to swift and successful organizing, solidarity, and
movement contacts, Hendrik was released from custody on
Monday evening. Many thanks to all the people who have
worked over the past few days to secure Hendrik’s freedom!
See below for more information on Hendrik’s situation.

This incident is a reminder to all of us about the
repressive political climate in the United States. Here
are some more examples of how this climate is manifesting
itself in regards to the movement to close the School of
the Americas:

€ ¦· Sixteen human rights activists who crossed the line onto
Fort Benning to call attention to the human rights abuses
connected to the SOA were found guilty in federal court
and received sentences from 1 year on probation to six
month in federal prison. Support the Prisoners of
Conscience: http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=129
€ ¦· The FBI has placed SOA Watch under “Counterterrorism
Surveillance”. € ¦· Harassment of people who organize events
or write letters to the editor about the School of the
Americas by SOA/WHINSEC officers (read Aaron Shuman’s
article “Fighting to Close the SOA and to Stop Government
Spying” here: http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1522
) € ¦· Denial of SOA Watch’s Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) Request by the Pentagon:http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1370

The way to counter the repression is to keep up the
resistance, to organize more effectively and to change the
values in this country. We can’t let intimidation and fear
outweigh our commitment to justice.

ORGANIZE AND TAKE ACTION:

Contact your Representative and urge her/him to sign-on to
HR 1707, the legislation that will suspend operations at
the SOA/WHINSEC and investigate the connection between the
school and atrocities in Latin America:http://www.soaw.org/legislative

Hendrik Voss was stopped by Capitol Police on Friday,
March 23 for allegedly putting a “Close the SOA” sticker
on a parking meter on Capitol Hill in preparation for the
upcoming Congressional vote on the SOA/WHINSEC. Several
officers of the Intelligence Unit of the Capitol Police
were called to the scene. After Hendrik retained his right
to not consent to a search of his belongings, he was
arrested.

Hendrik was held overnight in jail and appeared in court
on Saturday morning. There, the judge told Hendrik that
for this DC charge, he could be released on his own
recognizance to await an April 17 hearing date – BUT that
the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and
Customs Enforcement had put a detainer or “hold” on him,
preventing his release.

Neither Homeland Security nor Immigrations and Customs
Enforcement (the new name for the INS) charged him or gave
an explanation during this arbitrary detention. Hendrik is
a German citizen and is in the United States with a visa
and has not been convicted of any crime.

For three days, Hendrik joined thousands of people who are
being detained by the Department of Homeland Security in
the United States, and his arrest is just another example
of increasingly oppressive policies towards immigrants,
grassroots organizers and human rights groups that are
working to make positive social change.

Hendrik was unusually lucky that he had an advocacy
network outside of prison that alerted the German embassy,
made contact to immigration lawyers and Congressional
offices. No immigration related charges were filed but he
is still facing a court date on April 17, 2007 on the
charge of “defacing DC government property”.

=================================
HR 1707 INTRODUCED IN THE HOUSE
=================================

TAKE ACTION! – SEND A FAX AND EMAIL TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE
NOW!

Thanks to your actions and pressure on Congress, Rep. Jim
McGovern introduced HR 1707 on March 27, 2007, with 72
original co-sponsors! This new legislation would suspend
operations at the SOA/ WHINSEC and investigate the
association of torture and human rights abuses associated
with the school.

We need your help generating more cosponsors and support
for HR 1707! Visit the (link
to: http://www.soaw.org/legislative) on our website to learn more
about how YOU can get involved and add your cosponsor as a
supporter of this legislation. Use our Democracy In
Action tool to send an automatic letter to your Member of
Congress or access our sample call script and the
congressional switchboard phone number to make your views
heard in Washington! You can also access the updated list
of cosponsors at the bottom of that page.

For more information, please contact the Legislative
Coordinator of SOA Watch, Pam Bowman at pbowman(@)soaw.org
or 202-234-3440.

–> FIND OUT MORE about our Legislative Campaign to shut
down the SOA/WHINSEC
-http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=96″

=============================================
APRIL 25-27: HUNGRY FOR JUSTICE – FAST TO CLOSE
THE SOA/WHINSEC
=============================================

With a new bill and an imminent vote that would suspend
operations at the SOA/WHINSEC, April is a time of hope and
remembrance for the victims of human rights abuses
throughout the Americas.

On April 25-27, peacemakers, community organizers,
prisoners of conscience and human rights advocates around
the country will be fasting to raise awareness of the
victims of the SOA/WHINSEC. Public fasts and events in
front of Congressional offices, federal buildings,
university campus centers and public spaces will inform
the public and new members of Congress about the
SOA/WHINSEC and why we believe it must be shut down!

It is up to us, the people, to inspire a change in
people’s hearts and minds and bring peace and justice to
the hemisphere. We must make ourselves heard, we must make
ourselves visible and let our Representatives in Congress
and leaders in government know that we believe in peace,
human rights and transparency!

Retired Peruvian military officers Telmo Hurtado and Juan
Rivera Rondon were arrested by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, in Florida and Baltimore respectively, in
violation of U.S. immigration laws this past week.

Hurtado and Rivera stand accused for the August 14, 1985
massacre of 69 children, women and men in the village of
Accomarca, in the southeastern region of Ayacucho, Peru.
Both are facing a 2006 extradition order by a Peruvian
court for leading the four military brigades which
executed the 69 civilians.

Telmo Hurtado and Juan Rivera Rondon attended Arms
Orientation courses at the U.S. Army School of the
Americas from 1981-1982 during the height of military
repression. According to the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission that investigated the political violence in
Peru during the 1980’s, the armed forces killed and
“disappeared” more than 7,250 civilians who were not
involved in the conflict.

A recent Los Angeles Times article reported that a CIA
report linked Colombia’s top ranking military officer
General Mario Montoya to Colombia’s right wing
paramilitaries.

Colombia’s paramilitaries, considered terrorist
organizations by the U.S. government, are financed by drug
trafficking and have long been suspected of collaboration
with the Colombian military and key government leaders and
politicians.

General Mario Montoya attended the School of the Americas
as student in 1983 and as an instructor in 1993. The CIA
report states that Montoya and a paramilitary group
jointly planned and conducted a military operation in 2002
to eliminate Marxist guerrillas from poor areas around
Medellin where at least 14 people were killed and dozens
more disappeared.

As part of our ongoing campaign to visit countries with
troops attending the SOA/WHINSEC and strengthening our
relationships with human rights organizations in Latin
America, an SOA Watch delegation recently traveled to
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Lisa
Sullivan-Rodriguez of the SOA Watch Latin America Project,
Carlos Mauricio of the Stop Impunity Project, Linda
Panetta of SOA Watch Northeast and Fr. Roy Bourgeois of
SOA Watch traveled to the three Central American nations
with the most dramatic cases of SOA/WHINSEC violence and
U.S. military intervention.

“Clearly, our visit served to remind citizens that their
countries were continuing to send troops to the
SOA/WHINSEC, a place of horrors in the minds of most
Central Americans. Even the Guatemalan (Meeting with the
Guatemalan Defense Minister) and Honduran Defense
Ministers seemed surprised when we shared the current
numbers we had for their students at the school. Either
they are highly disorganized, are polished fibbers, or the
SOA/WHINSEC is inflating its figures. Whatever the case,
word spread quickly that the SOA was alive and well and
not buried with its old name, as many had thought.

Many organizations made commitments to continue to
pressure their governments to withdraw their troops from
the SOA/WHINSEC. Together we realized how important it is
to join our efforts, north and south, to close this school
of assassins and to monitor other institutions so that
they will not become a morphed version of the SOA/WHINSEC.
We left Central America, a land of martyrs, inspired by
the commitment of so many people who refuse for death to
have the final word.”

===================================
FORT HUACHUCA TWO FREE UNTIL JUNE
===================================

U.S. District Court Magistrate Hector Estrada Tuesday
refused to grant a military prosecutor’s repeated plea to
jail two Roman Catholic priests, each with a long record
of nonviolent protest and subsequent imprisonment, pending
their trial for trespass last fall at Fort Huachuca, in
Sierra Vista, Arizona. Estrada set trials to begin in
Tucson on June 4 for Jesuit Fr. Steve Kelly and June 6 for
Franciscan Fr. Louis Vitale. It is expected that the cases
will be consolidated, and the men will be tried together
that week.

The priests were arrested near the Fort Huachuca gatehouse
last November 19 during a demonstration in conjunction
with the annual vigil to Close the SOA/WHINSEC at Fort
Benning, Georgia. The two were arrested as they sought
entry to speak with enlisted personnel and deliver a
letter denouncing torture and the Military Commissions Act
of 2006 to Major General Barbara Fast, commander at the
post and a key figure in the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq.

Fr. Louie Vitale is a member of Pace e Bene, whose mission
is “to develop the spirituality and practice of active
nonviolence as a way of living and being and as a process
for cultural transformation.” Fr. Vitale is also a
co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience, a faith-based
organization that has opposed nuclear weapons testing for
a quarter of a century. Fr. Vitale recently served six
months in jail following his arrest at the Ft. Benning
vigil in November, 2005, and was ejected from
congressional hearings in September after speaking out
against the Military Commissions Act.

Fr. Steve Kelly is a member of the Redwood City Catholic
Worker community and has served time in federal prison for
the nonviolent direct disarmament of nuclear weapon
delivery systems. In December, 2005, Kelly served as
chaplain for Witness to Torture, a delegation of over two
dozen U.S. anti-torture activists who defied the U.S.
embargo of Cuba with a peaceful march through that nation
to the gates of the Guantanamo Bay navel base and prison
camp.

–> Read more about the Fort Huachuca 2 –http://www.jonahhouse.org/Huachuca.htm
*****************************
“One has to have a great dose of humanity, a great dose of the
feeling of justice and of truth not to fall into extreme dogmatism,
into a cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses. Every day
one has to struggle that this love to a living humanity transform
itself into concrete acts, in acts that serve as examples, as
motivation.” Ernesto “Che” Guevara